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The idea of being able to pay for ability to pick your Warlord Trait and Physic Powers. And you would have to pay for this for every Trait or Power you get.

Give it to both sides at no cost. It's a no-brainer in entirely too many cases.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Give it to both sides at no cost. It's a no-brainer in entirely too many cases.

But for example I have a single trait to choose and my opponent is running something like Nids and he has a trait and half a dozen powers, one side is clearly favored.

 Insane Smile wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Give it to both sides at no cost. It's a no-brainer in entirely too many cases.

But for example I have a single trait to choose and my opponent is running something like Nids and he has a trait and half a dozen powers, one side is clearly favored.

How do you only have one? Are you running a character? If yes, you likely already have enough of a bonus, and frankly, allowing generic HQs to pick their traits might make them worth taking over their character counterparts.

Warlord traits aren't really that big of a problem to me. At the most you'd need to make a list of what traits warlords should have access to, picked before deployment so things like "FNP near objectives" doesn't get picked before rolling Purge the Alien.

Psychic powers however are a huge concern. Every psyker with access to telepathy suddenly getting to pick puppet master or invisibility, or ensuring your Flyrant gets catalyst every time is where it get a bit out of hand.

Psychic powers should probably cost a bit extra, most likely determined by their warp charge cost. So a 1 charge spell costs 5 and a 2 charge spell is 10 for example.

Warlord Trait selection would fine as a small upgrade cost or free.

But I'd say for Powers you either keep it random or go through them and cost them indivually. The disparity between them is too great for a blanket cost IMO.

 Eldarain wrote:
Warlord Trait selection would fine as a small upgrade cost or free.

But I'd say for Powers you either keep it random or go through them and cost them indivually. The disparity between them is too great for a blanket cost IMO.

3e and 4e books seem to have done fine with differentially priced powers.

All the Psychic Powers should be rebalanced to be roughly equal. Warlord Traits need to be rebalanced too, but aren't as much of a priority.

The Dice roll for Psychic Powers sways games so much it's not even funny. Just rebalance them and let us pick which one we like.

Warlord Traits should also be selectable, but keep the preselected Warlord trait for Special Characters.

Tau already get to pick their Warlord Trait so why not everyone else?

Oh goody, I get to pick my weirdboy powers (PS: I don't, they'd still be random) whilst my opponent can nail whatever he wants in Telepathy, Biomancy, or whatever other psychic bs he wants. Sounds fair.

Frankly psychic powers are too ridiculous as it is and the last thing they need is a buff. And five points to make my warlord outflank or whatever it is I want him to do is nuts.

How about 50-strong platoons with 4++ and FNP+Relentless + Invisible? No ignore cover? just stick to invisible. Running along another 50-strong platoon with FNP+Relentless+Invis?
You currently don't see such things purely cause chances of getting both this powers are rather slim. And now you can buy them. And here you meet some orkses or dark eldar that can take only a warlord trait.

Roll up a Daemon Prince or Greater Daemon of Tzeentch.

Get iron arm, warp speed, and forewarning, the slayer of mortals warlord trait (or whatever gives you instant death) if you can, and an Eternal blade.

Get the grimoire from fateweaver who is himself iron armed and has endurance because feth taking hits.

Place endurance on your new god of war for extra lulz.

Now I can do this every game without fail.

Where is your god now?

Powers should never be chosen, they are WAY too powerful if you can plan ahead for them.

Traits...well, the "make your own character" thread we kina accepted it to be a 10 point upgrade for a character to have one fixed trait, not selecting according to what mission/enemy you have-just one trait you are getting with the character.

The ability to pick the trait every game would be hysterically powerful, and would be worth 50 points, easy.

 Insane Smile wrote:
The idea of being able to pay for ability to pick your Warlord Trait and Physic Powers. And you would have to pay for this for every Trait or Power you get.

I think warlord traits and powers are different. Warlord traits usually arent that powerful(although people do build lists specifically around special characters that have them fixed for a reason)

psykic powers are a different matter. Some of them get stupidly powerful on the right models or with the right units in the army.

Why can't you accept the current one? I see nothing wrong with random traits. It's not like they suddenly get to know something a second before a fight. It's just that you don't know what your leader is capable of and what trates he has.

And situations when your leades is, for example, ferocious and experienced in offence - furious charge in the ednemy deployment zone - while you're forced to play fully defensive, are quite normal. You're not alwayz good at everything you currently need, eh?

I think that random traits and powers are a good thing. Forces you to adapt to situations. War's rarely going as planned .

A lot of psychic powers need to be nerfed so we can pick without guilt. If we did this then a lot more lists would be viable. As it is now, certain units hinge on getting a specific power or always go with prescience because they're guaranteed to get it.

There is a certain amount of randomness that we put up with in 40k, but this randomness can be countered with weight of dice. Psychic Powers is a single roll per game. There is no way to play the odds or take calculated risks. It will average out over the course of several games instead of over the course of a single game. A single dice roll can decide if a Daemon Prince was a good idea.

 J3f wrote:
A lot of psychic powers need to be nerfed so we can pick without guilt. If we did this then a lot more lists would be viable. As it is now, certain units hinge on getting a specific power or always go with prescience because they're guaranteed to get it.

There is a certain amount of randomness that we put up with in 40k, but this randomness can be countered with weight of dice. Psychic Powers is a single roll per game. There is no way to play the odds or take calculated risks. It will average out over the course of several games instead of over the course of a single game. A single dice roll can decide if a Daemon Prince was a good idea.

I'd much rather bring up the traits and powers up to the standards of the best ones available.

5e Psykers were generally a load of "meh" with a few exceptions, and armies whose power tables are built to 5e standards (Tyranids or the CSM power tables) have even more "meh".

In addition, my group also allows any army to roll on any of the BRB tables for powers.

This does result in Iron Arm Warp Speed Endurance Swarmlords dueling with Super buffed Wraithseers, but that's half the fun.

Though our group does have more options to beat or mess with invulnerable saves and powers (Necron Warscythes ignore invuls again and we homebrewed in anti-psyker crypteks and pariahs for example) so it becomes less unbalancing then you would think.